Republic and Empire

“Republic and Empire shows how a global perspective can yield fresh insight even on a topic as well-trodden as the American Revolution.”—New Criterion “In this impressive distillation of a wide range of imperial scholarship, the authors present a compelling case for recognizing both the roots and the course of the American Revolution as profoundly influenced by events in the wider British Empire following its expansion in and immediately after the Seven Years’ War.”—Stephen Conway, University College London “The American Revolution was at once a civil war, a war of colonial liberation, and an imperial crisis. Viewing the conflict through empire’s eyes, O’Shaughnessy and Burnard reveal hidden connections and overlooked legacies that shaped the world of 1776 and continue to ramify around the globe.”—Jane Kamensky, Monticello “Timely, critically important contribution to our understanding of the American nation’s origins in a constitutional crisis and civil war that led half of Britain’s American colonies to declare independence. Balancing a welcome emphasis on the uncertain progress of the war with convincing accounts of why so many other colonies remained loyal, Burnard and O’Shaughnessy illuminate the contingent contexts that shaped individual and collective decisions in a revolutionary age.”—Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia “A masterful reappraisal of the American Revolution by two preeminent historians. Andrew O’Shaughnessy and the late Trevor Burnard brilliantly capture the duality at the heart of America’s founding: 1776 was both the beginning of a protracted imperial civil war and the birth of a democratic republic.”—Christa Dierksheide, author of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America